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As we know that children are bound to learn from their surroundings and adults around them. It is important to teach leadership skills to children early on, even to children who will not become leaders in life. Why so? It is because leadership skills help introduce a person to the ability, patience, endurance, sense of responsibility, and many other good qualities that everyone should have as a grown-up. While, it’s relatively easy to teach leadership skills to kids who are born to be one but for normal children, it takes time to learn basic skills and they need a lot of attention too.
Parents need to know the importance of instilling leadership skills to kids. Even if schools are teaching leadership in early childhood education, parents must play an active role to introduce basic leadership qualities in children by becoming a role model for them. Children who consider their parents to be superheroes of their lives become more successful leaders in life than ones who look up to others. Some important leadership skills for kids include problem-solving, relationship-building, integrity, independence, ability to mentor, conflict resolution, honesty, and decisiveness. If you’re watching out for some tips for how to teach your child to be a leader, this article is for you!
10 Holistic Lessons for Assertive Leadership Skills that Kids Can Learn
The holistic approach seems to be effective in a child’s development since they get to know about the connectedness of body, mind, and soul through this mode of learning. The caretakers, teachers, and parents take a holistic approach and pay deep attention to the child’s personal, physical, social, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing. So for teaching kids leadership to make them confident and independent in life, we have come up with a set of holistic lessons. Let’s explore!
Lesson 1: How to become self-reliant
Kids need help with everyday chores like they need help with buying things, dressing up, eating, doing homework, and so on. Despite that, there comes a time when they have a yearning for doing things on their own. This is the right time to nurture self-reliance in them. Letting your child become self-reliant will teach them how to be independent and how to handle the challenges of life without approaching daddy or mommy first. Teaching how to be self-sufficient is parallel to teaching kids leadership. You can teach them how to become self-reliant by:
Giving them money to budget
Since financial empowerment lifts self-esteem, a good way to teach your kids how to live on one’s hump is by giving monetary rewards when they do some house chores like taking out the garbage or doing dishes. This way, they will learn that they have to do something to be financially independent like real-life jobs. Also, teach them to do budgeting for their needs just like they will do later in life as a grown-up. On that account, you’re allowing them to make some mistakes with their funds too so they can learn that when money is gone, it’s gone. In addition to that, limit their habit of borrowing from Dad or Mom unless for an unavoidable situation.
Assigning some household responsibilities and chores
Another good way to teach responsibility is to let children extend their help in easy house chores like doing dishes after a meal, making a bed, unloading the dishwasher, walking a pet, or ironing clothes. Doing little chores not only makes kids responsible but also helps them learn how to take charge as a leader.
Allowing them to make their own decisions
Decisiveness is among the most paramount leadership qualities for kids. A child needs to be decisive to be an effective leader so the best way to teach children how to make big decisions in life is to let them make decisions for small things at an early age. Let them choose their gifts, outfits, and games, and how to spend their money. Also, it’s important to praise and support them for their decisions. This will help your leader child grow into an individual with his own (an essential leadership quality).
Lesson 2: How to foster positive interpersonal relationships
It is seen that children’s performance is greatly enhanced when their parents form a strong bond with them. Kids who feel safe, nurtured, forgiven, and cherished are more successful in life. To build a strong relationship with children, parents need to respond to their needs and strengths positively and give them leadership roles that will increase their confidence and keep them motivated to succeed. To strengthen your relationship with the children, it is important that you treat all the children equally and do not rebuke them for their mistakes but treat them with love. Otherwise, the fear of punishment will prevent them from strengthening their relationship with their parents, and in the same way, they will not be able to build relationships with others when they grow up. Having good interpersonal relationships helps leaders in conflict resolution too.
Lesson 3: How to avoid guilt trips
Train children to say NO when needed! As a leader, a person has to say no to a lot of things to protect the integrity of their people and organization. So train your children not to be embarrassed to share their own opinion or prioritize themselves. Tell them that they are only responsible for their words and actions, and not responsible for how others take them. They don’t need to be guilty about saying no to certain things which go against their moral values. All they need to be guilty about is the aggressive communication, demanding behavior, manipulation, corruption, and bullying.
Lesson 4: How to boost Negotiation Abilities
Children usually ask elders for permission to do small things. They also like to negotiate to get their desired results. So parents should foster their negotiation abilities by letting them ponder. For example, your child is not eating his food. Instead of scolding him, you should give him a situation like if he doesn’t eat food, he will not have enough strength to play outdoors. Let children decide for themselves. It is better to negotiate in such a way that kids can develop the ability to find imaginative solutions to problems. This skill of negotiating is going to help them big time as a future leader.
Lesson 5: How to Instill Optimism in Children
Optimism is directly related to success and growth and your child will need hope to get through the challenges of life. An optimistic leader always inspires people around him. Therefore, try to develop a positive mindset of your kid and teach him how he can distinguish between optimism and pessimism. Tell your child the benefits of positive thinking. Encourage him when he thinks positively about difficult situations. Read your children the true stories of the best leaders and tell them how they achieved victories in the most difficult of circumstances. Teaching leadership qualities to your kid does not necessarily mean that he will become a leader when he grows up. With such top-notch qualities, he will become the leader of his own life. What more can one wish for!
Lesson 6: How to get through challenges of life
Great leadership calls for hard work. Tell your child how to set reasonable expectations from their endeavors in life. Tell them that it takes a lot of hard work to achieve any great goal in life so they need to take baby steps to achieve big goals. Whenever they face any failures in life, you should stand by them and help them to get out of difficulties. Like every night ends at the day; after every difficulty, there is ease. Similarly, all risks and challenges that come in the way of great goals are valuable opportunities to succeed.
Lesson 7: How to have an assertive decision making
Having assertive decisiveness is among the most cherished leadership qualities for kids. When children are young, parents make decisions for them. When they have to make their own life decisions over time, they will have a hard time having so many options in front of them. Being a parent, you can help children by limiting the options for them and then ask for their opinion from the best-selected ones. Let them decide from the options! You can further guide them about the pros and cons of every decision. Always encourage them to inform others about their decisions. This will give them the ability to make decisions on their own – an important characteristic of a successful leader.
Lesson 8: How to do problem-solving
Sometimes teachers help students by answering their questions right away and other times they will leave their queries unanswered. Why so? It is because a good educator will not provide the right answers as much as they teach students how to use their problem-solving skills to find solutions for themselves. Parents should also start teaching problem-solving skills as early as possible. For instance, let your infant struggle to find a pacifier that just fell off! For toddlers, you can try some DIY projects together! Read them good problem-solving stories! Allow them to experience failure in life! These are some good practices that help your child arrive at solutions without problems.
Lesson 9: How to learn time-management
Empower your kids with the ability of time management because this skill is going to help them big time as a future leader. You can do it by establishing fixed beds and mealtimes, by designating a study zone, and by letting them make their calendars and timelines. Tell them that procrastination can prevent a person from achieving great goals. A right decision at the wrong time becomes useless.
Lesson 10: How to learn leadership skills from a leader
By talking openly with children, you can explore their interests. You can learn more about their interests through team activities. By getting enrolled in team activities, they will learn how their group leaders consider the needs of all team members and how they deal with different personalities in groups, how leaders set rules to accomplish goals and how they establish equality among all team members. This way they will get to observe leadership at an early age and apply it later as a future leader.
Leadership in Early Childhood Education and Influences of Adult Leaders on Children
It’s debatable whether kids learn to be leaders or they are born leaders. But the fact is that kids are naturally capable of developing basic leadership skills. It can be a long-running process but we can teach them basic skills whatsoever. Apart from teachers, parents are equally responsible for teaching leadership skills in early childhood.
Tell your children the stories of historical heroes and make them aware of their accomplishments. From a very young age, they need to be taught that leadership is more about actions than words. Since children learn most of the things from elders and likewise they learn leadership from them. They see leaders and imitate their qualities. However, they do not learn from observation as much as they learn from experience. Children who practice leadership from an early age are the ones who go on to become great and successful future leaders. An experiential leader child makes a successful leader when growing up. I have had a leadership temperament and abilities since I was a child, so now I want my children to start exercising leadership at an early age too. This practice can help them become better and more successful leaders later in life.
It’s important that parents improve the psycho-social stability of children. Parents should keep in touch with the child’s teachers and not only ask about their child’s academic performance but also ask about his general behavior and well-being. Parents should introduce their children to self-awareness. For instance, when your child returns home from school, you can ask him how his day went and how he could make his day even better. So you can advise your child on what mistakes he has made during the day and how he can improve himself without putting any emotional burden on them. You can tell your child how their parents have been making mistakes in their life and yet they are still heroes in their kids’ lives. In this way, the child will learn that it is not a bad thing to make mistakes. Acknowledging your shortcomings and improving yourself is what matters the most. Parents should do their best to improve themselves in the course of teaching kids leadership. Parents need to establish open discussions with children. This will improve your child’s thinking ability and will also help him overcome his imperfections and flaws.
Final Thoughts
With basic leadership skills, a kid can have better control of his life. In addition, leadership skills help kids solve problems and work in collaboration. They restore confidence and self-esteem in a child as well as develop a sense of responsibility in them. Parents shouldn’t only rely on teachers for instilling child leadership in children. They have to play an active role in developing basic leadership skills in kids by being a role model for them so a child will always look up to them when growing up.
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